Pune, October 7: Top-seed and winner of South and East Zone titles had to really dig in to make a great escape and move into the second round of the women singles in the 11Sports National Ranking (West Zone) Table Tennis Championships at the Mhalunge-Balewadi Sports Complex here today.

Her opponent Mamata Prabhu of Dena Bank on the verge of clinching the tie at 10-9 in the sixth game—she was leading 3-2 at that stage—but allowed the Haryana girl to wriggle herself out of the rut as she deuced and went on to win the game 12-10 and equal the score 3-3. From there, the team gold winner at the 2018 CWG was a changed player as she simply demolished the former India player 4-3.

In fact, the top-heavy half saw more such matches than the bottom half but all top eight seeds moved up without much hiccups.

In other interesting matches in the top half, Priyadarsini Das of RBI was stretched fully by Maria Ro of Canara Bank before the former winning the extended decider. Divya Deshpande, No. 8 seed, was in some discomfort before overcoming AAI’s Munmun Kundu to win 4-2.

Among the seeded players, No. 2 Manika Batra beat Vanshika Bhargava of Delhi 11-9, 11-6, 11-4, 12-10. But the little put up a good resistance to stretch her in the fourth game. However, it was easy for Pooja Sahasrabudhe, the fourth seed, against Tamil Nadu’s Shanmathi Sathyamoorthy, winning the match 11-5, 11-2, 11-8, 11-7.

Among men seeds, ninth seed Jubin Kumar was staring at an imminent defeat against Gujarat’s Jignesh Jaiswal, the oldest player in fray, at 1-3. But the left-handed picked up nicely to take the last three games and move into the next round. Probably, the old legs could not sustain the pressure unleashed by the Haryana man.

But it was rather surprising to see Tamil Nadu’s Ananth Devaraj losing to youngster Shreyal Telang from Karnataka in the round of 64 1-4. Ananth had entered the semifinals in the South Zone at Vijawada a few weeks back. Similarly, Manush Shah from Gujarat, a free-flowing left-hander, was struggling before overcoming Souvik Banerjee of West Bengal 10-12, 11-8, 7-11, 11-6, 12-10, 11-9.

For other seeds, it was as easy as it can get, including top-ranked Indian in the world Sharath Kamal who went through the motions.